


Waiting for Santangelo

by oddmonster



Category: Miami Vice
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-06
Updated: 2013-01-06
Packaged: 2017-11-23 23:11:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/627553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oddmonster/pseuds/oddmonster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Comparing past busts on stakeouts; why no one ever obeys when they hear "FREEZE!"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waiting for Santangelo

They had been sitting, waiting, in the dark and relative cold of a January Miami night, for more than four hours, watching Gino Santangelo. Santangelo, in turn, was sitting inside his warm, spacious villa, watching tv and waiting for five ki's of coke. Or so they hoped. Crockett leaned back against the Spyder's headrest and closed his eyes. He felt sometimes like he spent his whole life staring at the darkness, sitting in this car, watching, waiting. "Too many damn times," he muttered.

Tubbs put the binoculars down and turned to his partner with an inquisitive look. "Somethin' you wanna share?"

"Y'ever feel like we're just goin' round in circles with these turkeys?" Crockett's gaze didn't leave the windshield.

Rico shrugged. "Maybe it's the same circle. Maybe it's just one big circle. Like the circle of life, you know? A little fish, caught by a bigger fish, who's then in turn eaten by a bigger fish still, 'til there's nothing but sharks. Then the sharks die off and become food for more...little...fish."

Crockett raised his eyebrows incredulously. "I don't know about you, pal, but I ain't no fish. I'd rather be the guy on the boat with the fishing rod and the beer." Rico snorted.

"Did I ever tell you about the first time I busted Santangelo?" Tubbs turned back from the window.

Crockett continued. "He's high as a kite, standing on the corner of Biscayne at rush hour, in a long coat and some sort of feathered mask, yelling about God and the Devil and this that and the immortal other. Anyway. Me and Eddie wound up hauling him in on simple possession." Crockett chuckled. "You know what he told us? He told us he only had the coke for use in religious rituals. Said it was sacred to his people."

"So? Was it?"

"Rico, he had three ki's under his jacket. I told him that's a helluva lot of religion."

It was Tubbs' turn to laugh. "I guess if going out of your mind is sacred, he must have been the next Messiah."

Crockett sighed and squinted at the villa. Inside the house, nothing appeared to have changed. He could just see the tips of Gino's feet propped up on the coffee table as the images on the screen flowed one into the next, contributing to the warm light emanating from the bay window and spilling out onto the dark street.

"The next time we ran him in for murder." Crockett's voice grew quieter. "He'd been using some of his working girls to do a few salescalls, you know, only one of them, she didn't get the price Santangelo told her to. He beat her all to hell, and by the time some neighbors called us, there were barely enough teeth in one place to ID her from her dental records. Sixteen years old, came here to find a better life, all she found was Santangelo."  
Tubbs stared into the darkness without seeing, shook his head.

"Lemme tell you, nothing's sacred to that scumbag, no matter who his people are."

They both sat in silence, lost in their own thoughts. Tubbs looked at his watch. Headlights were coming up the street towards them, then slowed down, closing in on the villa. Reflexively, the two cops slouched down in the Spyder's bucket seats and watched the pizza delivery van turn into the driveway. "Pizza, huh?" Rico asked. Crockett looked wary. "Something doesn't smell right about this." They watched the driver pop out, lugging two big warming bags after him. The two detectives looked at each other. "Do those pizzas look a little heavy to you?" Tubbs asked.

"Easy, Rico, easy. Let him get in there. I wanna see Santangelo take them. I want this one to stick." From the two-way radio nestled between the Spyder's seats, Castillo's voice growled across the shortwaves. "All teams, hold your places. Wait for my signal."

The two of them waited unmoving, watching the delivery driver approach the front door. From their vantage point, even with the binoculars, all they could make out was an upper corner of the front door. To have parked any closer would have been suicide, but now it was on, Tubbs wished they could have found a better view. He could make out the corner of a chest and two arms reaching out for the naughahyde warmer bags in the light of the open door, and then it was over. The door slammed shut and the driver moseying back to the van.

Tubbs looked at Crockett. "Where the hell was the signal?"

Crockett's brows furrowed. "I got a plan. Stay here and stay low." He quickly jumped out and popped the hood, propping it up on the hood arm before jumping back into his seat. Tubbs looked skeptical, but stayed quiet.

Crockett opened the door into the path of the oncoming van and stepped out into the night. The van slowed to a halt and the driver rolled down his window, assessing the sleek black convertible with its international signal of helplessness. Then he took in the two men with the car, and started to roll the window back up. Crockett stepped forward, whipping out his gun and his badge in one smooth movement. "Miami Vice! FREEZE!"

The driver gunned it and the van shot forward, forcing Crockett to dive sideways across the trunk of the Spyder. He rolled smoothly and came up shooting, and he and Rico peppered the roadway with gunfire, but the van sped away into the darkness. The van's squealing tires drowned out the crackle of the shortwave, and they watched in frustration as the delivery van took a sharp left and disappeared. Suddenly the culdesac around Santangelo's villa came alive in a river of dark windbreakers and firearms, surging towards the house. Picking themselves up off the road, the two cops felt, rather than heard the slow, measured steps crossing the street, an authority in quiet contrast to the barked commands and streams of Spanish invective splitting the night. Castillo looked up from his shoes.

"What happened."

Crockett holstered his gun and brushed rocks and gravel from his linen pants. "You tell us."


End file.
